


Forgetting to Exceed Expectations

by FrostedFox



Category: Letterkenny (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, F/M, Stealing, Theft, spelling bee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 19:19:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18976768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostedFox/pseuds/FrostedFox
Summary: She was thirteen and shoving chocolate bars into her zip-up in the dollar store. Too many, Stewart noticed, and not suave enough to fool the cashier when she inevitably went to leave. So he stepped in.





	Forgetting to Exceed Expectations

**Author's Note:**

> Snow glistens on the ledge, whiskey on the bed  
> Shake it out and light a cigarette  
> Miss me when you wish you weren't right  
> Shake me all out if I'm wrong for you  
> Shake it all out when I'm gone  
> I, for you
> 
> \- ("Devil Like Me" - Rainbow Kitten Surprise)

 

 ** STEWART  ** 

She was thirteen and shoving chocolate bars into her zip-up in the dollar store. Too many, Stewart noticed, and not suave enough to fool the cashier when she inevitably went to leave. So he stepped in. Walked right up to the register and pointed at an aux cord behind the counter. 

“How much is that?”

“Dollar.”

“And that?” This time pointing at a bag of chips on the other side of the store from Katy. He wished she would hurry up and leave. 

“Dollar.”

“And—“

“Everything’s a dollar.”

“But what’s the quality like?”

Finally Katy was moving, turning towards the door. She looked … beautiful.

“Best you can get for a dollar,” the cashier said. 

Stewart pointed away from the door. “Have you ever used one of those?”

“Toilet brush. Yeah I’d say.”

“Right. I’ll take this,” Stewart said, pulling a KitKat from a stand and dropping it on the counter.

“That’ll be a dollar.”

Katy was around the side of the dollar store when Stewart emerged. He pushed back his hair and offered the chocolate bar to her. “The name is kinda like Katy-Kat.”

“Thanks,” she said, then turned away. “But I already have like, three.”

“You shouldn’t steal so much next time. That’s what gets you caught.”

“Alright,” said Katy. “Sure. Thanks.” She stood up off the curb. “See you around, Stewart.”

He was surprised that she remembered his name. 

** *** **

“When a man asks for help, you help him,” Katy said, all legs and eyes on the lounging lawn chair. Stewart had just admitted homelessness in front of the third-to last people he wanted to admit homelessness to. But third-to-last is practically best in Letterkenny. And anyways, this uprising, this coup, this mutiny had a lot to do with Katy. He chose her, after all. 

“If you asked me for help I would help you,” Stewart says, then instantly regrets it when he watches Wayne stiffen. In what event would Wayne need Stewart’s help? Still, it doesn’t feel like a lie in the moment. 

“Oh, look, they're comin' land, sea and air now.”

Katy pipes in, “You can stay.”

“Wondrous!”

“For a couple days.”

“Favourable.”

“That’s 48 hours, max.”

“Satisfactory.” He’s feeling a touch diminished but there’s a part of him that thinks she might mean he can stay with her, and then: 

“We’ll put your shit in the spare bedroom. Come on.”

  

** KATY **

He throws house parties near to every weekend in the summer. No one quite knows where his parents go; no one ever sees them around and this, to Katy, reads as one of the reasons he is why he is. Stewart is reckless, a mess, an all-or-nothing partier. His dance moves … need work, but he throws his whole being into them, and she appreciates that about him. 

The parties are almost always full, almost always loud, and almost always ragers. Katy starts going when she’s fifteen, he’s seventeen. He doesn’t notice her in the crowd. No one notices her. She’s twig-thin with no boobs and pimples. She’s bug-bitten all up her arms and legs from farm work. She loves the parties because her parents never did parties and the energy fills something in her — the music, oh, she loves the music. Still, she’s a nobody from the hick side of town. Agricultural life pairs with agricultural music. 

So, she steals. 

Stewart keeps his original mix-tapes in his bedroom. She knows this because she went snooping at the first party she attended. It’s not hard to slip into the bedroom at the back of the basement because everyone else is stoned and dancing. His walls are decked out in posters and there’s cracker packaging everywhere. And cookies. And — jars of strawberry jam? The tapes are on a bookshelf, plain site targets.

She wants to take a bunch, stuff her pockets, but then she remembers what he had said to her outside the dollar store two years ago. “You shouldn’t steal so much. That’s what gets you caught.”

So she takes one this week. Another, two weeks later, and another after that. He never notices, or if he does, she doesn’t hear about it. At home she listens to the tapes — all his own music — and thinks that maybe, underneath the mess, he might be a genius. 

 

** *** **

He looks so sad, there on the steps to the clinic. Denying that he uses meth as though he doesn’t brag about it when he’s alright. He doesn’t want to show weakness. She guesses that she can understand. “You’re not a teenager anymore. It’s not charming.”

A beat.

“I used to charm you?”

“Wrong takeaway,” she sighs. “You know, you’re not a fuckin’ idiot.” She says this and means it. He’s the only person in Letterkenny who can challenge her at spelling. He was top of his class until he started on the drugs. She knows his mind still works — it just doesn’t work in the right direction. “You could turn it around if you wanted to.” And she stops to think whether or not it’s a good idea to say what she’s going to say next. Darry groans next to her. Fuck it. “You know, I remember sneaking into your parties when I was fifteen. Stealing your mix-tapes. All your own music. I was really impressed.” 

Stewart is waking up now. She knows she has the power to effect him. The power that he had over her nearly ten years before. “Guess those days are over, though. Darry, come on.”

She hoists Darry up the stairs as the clinic opens, leaving Stewart on the steps. “And yeah,” she says, turning back. “You did used to charm me.”

 

** STEWART  **

At twenty years old he is the two-year reigning champion of the Letterkenny Adult Spelling Bee, but this year, _she’s_ entered. Everyone knows Katy got the best grades in school in her year. Everyone knows that she could have got into the best colleges, universities, that she could have gone anywhere. But her parents were gone and moving would mean leaving her brother with the farm, the land, the chores. So she stayed. 

But now that she’s eighteen, she can enter the Letterkenny Adult Spelling Bee and this makes Stewart nervous.  

Nobody takes him seriously in this town anymore. Calling him Skid. Calling him greasy. Drugged out. Meth-head. Yeah, alright. He can see it. He’s never tried to fit in with the rest of them. As soon as everyone hit the workforce, they stopped coming to his parties. He was left with only his closest friends, a basement, a meth-lab, and some mad ‘chelling skills. And — of course — his extravagant, bewildering, precise vocabulary. And Letterkenny? They love the Adult Spelling Bee. 

Also competing are a couple of up-and-coming hockey bros that Stewart demolished last year, his own friend Roald who wouldn’t take Stewart down even if he wanted to, and a boy from the Rez, Daniel, who looks so nervous about the whole thing that Stewart would be surprised if he could get a letter out, let alone think straight enough to spell. And then there’s Katy. Katy-Kat. And his chest fills with air when he sees her because she looks … beautiful. As she walks on stage to take her seat, she makes long, direct eye contact with him. Her eyes narrow and it takes everything in Stewart not to involuntarily squeak. The crowd goes wild. She’s the favourite to win and also, well, the favourite.  

Roald is called up first with “handkerchief” which he manages to spell. A lucky draw, there. The hockey bros go up together and no one protests. They knock themselves out with “supersede”. Then Daniel manages to spell “deductible” correctly and it’s Katy’s turn but there’s no way that “indict” is going to stump her, pronunciation aside. Stewart stays in the running with “homogeneity”. Roald giggles but is swiftly knocked out by “limousine”. Elementary. 

Daniel manages to pull through another round but is knocked out by “subterfuge”. And then.

Katy takes the stand. “Vulnerable” is easy stuff and Stewart would roll his eyes if the word didn’t hit him in the guts. His turn brings “pneumonia” which is hardly fair. “Mausoleum”, “idiosyncrasy” and “conscientious” pass them by. And then. 

“Ebullient” — joyously happy. Stewart knows the definition but he asks anyways to buy time. To stop the panic. He’s worried now. He tries. E-B- pause. O or U? He goes with U. L-I-E-N-T. As soon as Jim says “Oh,” in that patronizing way, Stewart knows his mistake. Two Ls. Of course. Katy gets another word.

He wants to hope she misspells. He wants to hope for a mistake. But no. He’s already lost. And to beat her wouldn’t feel like winning, anyways. Nor would the community let him forget it. The Letterkenny Adult Spelling Bee was his saving grace, but now that she’s here, winning was worse than losing. 

She spells “grandiloquent” correctly. The room erupts. 

** *** **

 

She had lost last year to a silent E. It had been, admittedly, hard to watch. Of course, Stewart had caught it as soon as it happened. The win was more sweet than he anticipated. After she had left him, after he had become a decided outcast, there was nothing left for him to lose. Antagonization was the name of the game from the usual Letterkenny crew. But the outsiders — particularly people from the city — found his win endearing. 

Well, he was well enough endowed in the spelling department. Among others. This year he knew that Katy would be back with a vengeance. She was, and always would be, his greatest challenge.

The hockey players had entered again for god knows what reason. “Joint Boy” stood intimidating in stature and, it was rumoured, in spelling skills so long as he was baked, and McMurray was no intellectual, but he could play dirty. The people of Letterkenny were too justice-minded to let anything stand in the way of Katy’s win — and this would benefit Stewart, who had no need to pull tricks. 

He was happy to have rolled in with the pretty city girls, but Katy wasn’t there yet to see the boast. Stewart took his place and waited. When Katy entered she glowed, radiant and … beautiful. He attempts a scowl. She flashes … gold tooth caps? 

And then they’re off. Farceur. Disparate. There’s something off with the hockey players: their word, hockey is too easy. Too obvious. Well, no bother. The name of the game is toughening up. Ensconce won’t stop the stoner. And McMurray’s up to his mumbling tricks with confrere. 

The show goes on and the cheaters are cheating with such obviousness that it can’t last, yet it seems to. On the break — much needed — he goes to Katy. They’re both out of breath, but he still dances over, the adrenaline running strong. 

“Katy.”

“This is getting out of hand, Stewart,”

He likes it when he says her name. “Too much for you?” His hand is on the back her chair. So close. She says nothing. “What?” He can hear the sharpness in his own tone. She isn’t looking at him “Did you think this would be silent eeeeeasy.” It’s a low-blow, but he feels clever. 

She hits him in the crotch. Well. He deserved that. Wayne comes out of nowhere and pushes him back to his seat. He catches himself on the edge and he spins back into place. He feels, well, not quite smooth, but not completely disastrous either. It’s not like chirping skills haven’t attracted Katy in the past. What else are those hockey players good for?

It turns out the hicks used the break to put a stop to the cheating and Stewart almost feels grateful. He wants to win. There are stakes — gorgeous stakes sitting next to Roald and cheering for him. He grins out across the audience and one of the women waves with just her fingers. 

And then it’s just the two of them. Katy rolls her neck towards him. He tries to tell her that he hates her. Instead, he mouths the word “love” and immediately wants to hit himself in the face. _Hate. Hate._ Katy’s up first.  

Triskaidekaphobia. 

One of the most commonly used words in bees. Well, shit. He knows she’ll nail it and she does. But — then Jim makes that sound. The sound that says Katy made a mistake. T-r-i-s-k-a-i-d-e-k-a-p-h-o-b-i-a. No, Katy had spelled it correctly. 

“No, that’s how you spell triskaidekaphobia,” Katy says. The audience mumbles. Katy is shaken. She’s not about to argue with the judge, which is something Stewart doesn't understand. She’s second guessing herself, Stewart can see the doubt across her face. It could break him, but then he looks out at his section of the audience again. There is Roald, all the hope in the world in his eyes.

Well. Stewart has one chance. The world has dropped this in his lap like a sign. “T-R-I-S-K,” he spells, then a minuscule pause. Roald crosses his throat and points to his eye. “-A-D-E-K-A-P-H-O-B-I-A.” He feels treacherous, treasonous. He tells himself these bad feelings are out of a linguistic integrity, but integrity has never haunted him like this. No, it was that doubt crossing Katy’s face that repeats through his head. 

Jim declares him the winner. But nothing lasts forever. There’s a kerfuffle and the truth comes out and Stewart gets what, he knows, was coming. Fuck Tanis. He is off stage, watching as the hicks lift Katy, and then he is apologizing. Misspelling a word on purpose turns out to feel so much worse than a mistake. He knows how to spell the damn word. The women leave. The towns people scowl. He breaks down.

Only Katy knows what he has done. Only Katy can see his intentionality. This is better and so much worse. When he looks to her, she looks away. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Is the devil so bad if he cries in his sleep, while the earth turns?  
> And his kids learned to say fuck you  
> they don't love you  
> Does the devil get scared if she dies in her dreams  
> Where the earth burns?  
> You see the devil don't mean to be evil  
> He just regrettably forgets to exceed expectations
> 
> \- ("Devil Like Me" - Rainbow Kitten Surprise)


End file.
